Save Article

While You Wait, Why Not
Make a List, Get Voice Mail?

Most people accept boot time -- those lost moments when a computer cranks up -- as a fact of life. But Raj Reddy sees it as $25 billion going down the tubes.

Mr. Reddy, dean of the computer science school at Carnegie-Mellon University in Pittsburgh, grew weary of watching the hourglass icon on his screen every time he booted up in the morning. So he calculated the lost economic productivity associated with waiting a minute or two each morning for a PC with Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 95 operating system to boot up.